


Reverie

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 05:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14489586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: Steve, in the silence following the stones.





	Reverie

There is silence after the stones, after the dust.

They sit, horror-stricken, gathered in that small clearing in Wakanda. The only sound is ragged breathing, the occasional cry in the distance. It reeks of war, of sweat and whatever alien metal has invaded the atmosphere. But there's something else there. Something that rises from the soil, that settles into their skin.  It's a smell Steve will never forget.

Death, on the wind.

| 

When Steve showers that night, he watches as remnants of the day sluice off him in rivulets, circling the drain, ash and blood, and body matter.

He's weary of the quiet that follows this kind of loss. He's weary of the thoughts in his head,  _what if_ and  _what the hell_  and _what do we do now_? 

He's weary of _I can't believe they're gone._

The water runs black, then grey, then clear. They were there, and then they weren't. They were here, and now they're gone.

Nothing left to even bury. 

|

In between the just-keep-moving, in between the you've-done-this-before, in between the grim determination to get up every morning and live—

Steve dreams.

|

He’s on the National Mall. It’s early dawn, cold and clear. He’s standing in front of the reflecting pool, and the sky overhead is a soft pink. Everything is beautiful.

“We’re not on the run anymore, you know.”

The voice is warm, familiar. Steve inhales sharply; it’s a shard of happiness to hear it again, like pain blurring into pleasure.

“You ever think maybe you don’t have to keep the beard? Maybe even cut your hair?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve says, watching amorphous shadows ripple on the water. There is a catch in his chest that makes it hard to breathe. Still, he struggles to smile. “Just because _you_ didn’t want a disguise—“

“Okay, but I can _fly_ ,” the voice interrupts. “Look, I’m just saying. You got a whole Thor thing going on right now, which. Don’t get me wrong, I respect. Dude’s a thunder god.”

A hand rifles through the hair at Steve’s nape, and he shivers, leans into the touch, eyes squeezed tight.

“But I kinda think you already had an edge.” the voice says. There is affection there, and sadness. The barest hint of something wistful. “Miss you, man.”

And for a moment, the grief feels too large for Steve’s body to contain. He folds his arms, braces himself against the fine tremors running up and down his body. Tries to talk past the sorrow that’s choking him.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I miss you, too.”

There is a sound like a sigh, like the whisper of metal, like a bird taking flight.

Steve turns around, but all he can catch is a glimpse, the bright slash of a smile and the blur of brown skin. The slap of footsteps on the pavement, the wild joy of laughter in the chase.

On the ground, in the air, there is only ash.

When Steve wakes up, he is alone.

“Come back,” he says, to the ceiling, to nothing. He closes his eyes. “Please,” he says. “Please, come back.”

He doesn’t fall asleep again for a long while.

|

On the Quinjet, there’s a pair of wings that Steve can’t bring himself to look at.

He hides them away, tries to hide all the things that remind him of broad shoulders and dark eyes and backup always in his ear. He sweeps the jet, gets nearly everything, but—

There are two coffee cups.

One is plain, the rim lined with coffee stains. The other is tucked close by to its twin, the same in all ways except for a message hastily scrawled with permanent marker: _Property of Samuel Thomas Wilson - do not touch THIS MEANS YOU CAPTAIN GRABBY HANDS!!_

Steve doesn’t throw the cup out, or crumple it, or hide it away. Instead, he leaves it, a talisman or a charm.

A beacon, maybe, to lead someone home.

|

He’s standing on a boardwalk in Brooklyn, and it smells like summer.

The sun is hot and the sky is blue. When he tips his face to the clouds, Steve can taste the salt of the sea and the sweet bite of powdered sugar and cotton candy.

“You know, I actually like the long hair.”

This time when the voice comes, it’s different. Low and teasing, an echo of New York in its vowels and consonants.

“And the beard, even though last time I saw you with so much hair on your chin, you were playing Joseph in a nativity scene.”

Steve’s mouth quirks even as he leans over the rail and concentrates on staring at the water; anything so his eyes won’t burn.

“I mean, we grow what we can, right, pal?” the voice asks. “We do what we gotta do, and take what we get.”

Steve looks down at his hands, where the skin splits and heals and there’s never anything left to show for all the pain.

“Sure,” he says, bitter to the root. “And sometimes we do what we shouldn’t have to, even when we can’t anymore.”

Just out of the corner of his eye, there’s a strand of dark hair moving in the breeze, the gleam of a vibranium arm.

“I’m tired,” Steve says. He lets his head drop, feels the stretch of his muscles, the sun on his neck. “I’m so goddamned tired.”

A hand settles then between his shoulder blades, a pressure so light it’s almost like a kiss.

“So, rest.” the voice is gruff, kind. “Ain’t a person in this world who deserves the rest more than you.”

There is a feeling like a fist squeezing Steve’s stomach, twisting his insides.

“You did,” he says, and now that fist is squeezing tighter. A rising anger swells within him, in tandem with the waves. “You deserved a rest, too.” He straightens, whirls around. “ _We_ deserved—“

He’s not sure how to complete the sentence, but it doesn’t matter.

There’s no answer, anyway.

Just the crash of water to shore, and a pile of ashes in the sand. 

|

On the design that Shuri had sketched out for Bucky’s battlefield uniform, there is only one note. For the right sleeve, instructions in careful, neat script:

_Add wings._

Wings, like the wings on Steve’s helmet. Wings, as a reminder of the boy he was when he first picked up a gun to follow a dumb kid from Brooklyn who never knew when to quit.

Wings, to mark him as one of Steve’s own.

He think he would’ve liked the patch as a remembrance. Some kind of memento to keep, the way he tucked Peggy’s picture in that compass. He thinks he would’ve liked a new true north.

Only, the uniform and the man wearing it, that sleeve with its patch, is gone.

Dust on the ground.

Like everything, in the end.

|

“You checked up on my mama.”

Steve keeps his eyes closed. He’s under a tree on the edge of the Avengers compound, the one he used to rest beneath after a long run. It’s been three years since he was last here. The ground feels strange under his back.

Next to him, there’s a rustle. Something heavy drops down on the ground. A shoe nudges Steve’s foot.

He gropes blindly next to him till he catches a sleeve. “I like your mother,” he says.

There’s a chuckle.

“Well, she likes you, too. And Darlene Wilson doesn’t like just anyone. She put Riley through it the first time I brought him home. You? You got homemade chili.”

Steve opens his eyes, just a crack. Looks up at the canopy of leaves, but doesn’t let his fingers ease up from their grip on the sweatshirt.

“She cried,” he says. “When I told her. When I told her you were gone, she said she knew it would happen someday. That she was just glad you were with me in the end. Like it mattered. Like that _helped_.”

A hand drops over his, squeezing. There’s the circle of a thumb across his knuckles, soothing and slow.

“It did.”

Steve frowns. “Did it?” he asks. “Thanos snapped his fingers, and I couldn’t stop it. People died. You—“

His voice breaks.

 _"You_ died,” he says. “You weren’t supposed to. It wasn’t ever supposed to be you.”

There’s a meditative silence in the wake of Steve’s confession, because that’s what it is. A confession. A revelation that he’d looked into an uncertain future and seen something to construct promises around.

Steve’s never said it before, they’ve never talked about it, but it’s out there now. Plain as day.

“I had plans,” he says. “For us. I had plans.”

The thumb against his knuckles presses briefly against his ring finger. It sends a shaft of longing through Steve, rips the breath from him.

“I know,” he hears, and then he turns his head, desperate to catch more than a glimpse, desperate to _see._

This time, there are no ashes in Sam’s wake.

Steve supposed it’s a kindness.

|

Sometimes, Natasha comes over to drink vodka shot for shot while watching old black and white movies, and when they pass out, Natasha curls into him with half the duvet dragged to her side and one leg thrown over his waist.

“You were screaming,” she informs him one night, when he looks over his shoulder at her with an eyebrow raised. Her hands have a death grip on his waist.

“Yeah?” he asks, voice still rough with sleep. “Sorry about that.”

Natasha tightens her hold a little.

“You kept screaming _bring them back,”_ she elaborates. “You kept saying their names.”

She is no stranger to nightmares, or loss. Or regret, or guilt, or loneliness. She is no stranger to terror. Of all people left in his life, Natasha is one of the few who would understand Steve best if he were to describe what haunts him.

Instead, he turns back around and burrows deeper into his pillow. He reaches back, lets her fingers, cool and strong, be the anchor he needs.

“Nat?” Steve asks. “Remember when we were on the run and we couldn’t sleep, how sometimes you’d...I hate to ask, but would you mind—“

Natasha tilts her forehead against his back. “Of course,” she says. “God, of course.”

She hums a few discordant bars, just enough for Steve to relax. For his breathing to even out.

And then she begins to sing.

It’s a Russian lullaby that sounds like a prayer. It’s a reminder, and a reassurance. The lyrics say that everything will be alright. That love is enough to save them. That no one is alone in the end.

It might be a lie, but like all the ones Natasha has learned to craft—

At least it’s a pretty one.

|

They’re on a fire escape overlooking New York City. There’s the smell of grilled beef from the Bareburger down the street and a raucous cry that sporadically bursts out from a bar downstairs.

Steve’s legs dangle as the fire escape creaks next to him. “Hoboken,” he says dryly. “Funny choice.”

“I dunno, once you’ve lived on a mattress in a hovel in the middle of Romania, Hoboken doesn’t seem so bad.”

They sit, thigh to thigh, a warm long wall of bodies lined up against one another.

“Yeah, but _Jersey?_ ”

“There’s nice things about Jersey. Or so I’ve heard.”

Steve scoffs. “We lived to be almost a century and this is the first time either of us crossed the bridge,” he says. “And it’s in a _dream._ That’s gotta say something.”

There’s shifting in the weight next to him. “It _says_ that we’re idiots. I’d go to Timbuktu if it meant seeing you again.”

A hand on Steve’s knee, broad-palmed and callous-fingered.

“If you could do it over,” say the voice in his ear, slow and serious, a voice Steve knows better than his own, “If you could do it all over...would you tell me?”

And the fire escape seems to drop from below him at the question, because there are things he kept locked inside a box he never unlatched, feelings he wasn’t sure were returned that were then overshadowed by loss. There are things he could never undo, and thinking about—possibility—always hurt.

It hurts now, come to think of it.

“Yeah,” he says, swallowing down the pain, the regret, the rueful dreams of what could have been. “Yeah, I’d tell you.”

Admitting it feels like jumping out a plane into the ocean, waiting for the cold rush of reality closing over his head. His stomach bottoms out as the moment teeters, stretches.

There’s the graze of lips against Steve’s forehead.

“I’d tell you, too,” Bucky says, and when Steve turns to look at him, he’s gone.

|

Sometimes, Thor brings over some alcohol he’s fashioned out of Wakandan grain, and they drink until they’re almost blind, and instead of passing out, they have a manly heart-to-heart.

“My parents,” Thor rumbles, sprawled out on the couch. He has his hand aloft, fingers jabbing the air as he counts. “My brother. My fellow warriors. My best friends. My entire kingdom.”

He hiccups. “ _My hammer_ ,” he adds mournfully.

Steve nods gravely from his perch on a bar stool. He glares into the cloudy depths of his drink. “My shield,” he says. “I miss my shield.”

“And your friends,” Thor supplies. “Your friends are gone, as well.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Steve says, morose. “Yeah, they’re gone too.”

Thor groans and rolls over. “It is monstrously unfair, isn’t it,” he says. “That we should be protectors of Earth, that we should work to preserve the universe, giving our lives, giving our peace, and there is no end in sight. Only more sacrifice.”

Steve glares harder at his drink, then takes a swig. It tastes like pure rubbing alcohol and he winces.

“Selfish,” he agrees, wiping a hand across his mouth. “The universe. ‘S selfish. Made me 100 years old and then took all the people I care about. No offense, Thor.”

“Ah,” Thor says wisely. His face is pressed into the arm of the couch, voice muffled. “None taken.”

“I dream of them,” Steve says. “Every night. Except, whenever I try and look at them, they turn into ash, or. They just —” He makes a motion, like _poof!_ “Disappear.”

He thumps his head into his hands. “Why don’t they stay?” he asks. “Why does everyone keep _going?_ ”

Thor’s hand skims over Stormbreaker on the floor, a crackle of lightning whipping across the room. It’s a gentle zing, a quick admonishment.

“Perhaps that does not matter,” Thor says, “Perhaps what matters is that they keep coming back.”

And Steve thinks about the dreams. The way he can smell Sam’s cologne, or Bucky’s pomade, how he can hear the pulse at their throats. He thinks about how the dead never really leave, not if there’s someone around to keep them alive. 

He thinks about telling them in death what he could never tell them in life, and how it feels like a second chance buried deep within an ending.

“Maybe,” he allows, and the lightning gives one more friendly tap before Thor vomits and passes out.

|

He’s standing in a smoky bar, the kind that he and Sam used to frequent when they had a minute to themselves for a cold pint of beer, the kind where a man could get lost in the dark for a minute.

There’s a guy bending over the pool table, and his arm shines under the dim overhead lighting.

“Got time for a game?”

Steve turns, and there’s another guy, with a gap-toothed grin and a ball cap brim pulled lower over twinkling eyes.

“Sam,” he says. He takes in the sight of every contour and angle, throat working as he stares.

“That’s me,” Sam says. “And that’s Bucky, over there. We don’t get to him fast, he’s gonna hustle someone out of their imaginary dream money.”

The guy at the pool table looks up at them, and yes, it’s Bucky, dark hair and stubbled cheeks and the tiniest smirk on his face.

Steve blinks. “Wouldn’t want that,” he says. Here, too, he greedily drinks in every detail, the battered leather jacket and the dog tags around Bucky’s neck. The elastic band around his wrist.

Sam leans in close, and there’s a low buzz that starts under Steve’s skin at the proximity.

“You and me, the year we first went on the run. We started a game back in that dive in Missouri. Remember?” Sam asks. “We got unfinished business.”

Steve keeps his eyes on the pool table as they walk, as Sam’s hips brush his. “Like ghosts,” he says. “Like that movie Casper.”

Sam catches Steve’s wrist casually, gives it a squeeze as he tugs him playfully close. “Can I keep you?” he asks, and the buzzing under Steve’s skin gets louder.

“Yeah,” he says, deliberate. “Yeah, you can keep me.”

Sam’s smile is like the dawn breaking over water, slow but luminous.

Bucky hands Steve a pool cue with a nod and a searching look. Their fingers brush, and there’s a feeling like scrabbling at a cliff, like falling from a great distance and trying to grab hold of whatever is near.

“If you’ve got room for one more,” Bucky says. “I think we got a little unfinished business of our own.”

Steve hefts the cue in his hands, tests it weight. “Think you’re right,” he says. “And you ought to know by now that there’s always room for you. That some rooms were _made_ for you.”

It’s unbearably honest, but it makes the stars come out in Bucky’s eyes, make them flare blue like a flame, and Steve feels suddenly immersed by the heat, like sinking into a pool touched by the sun.

“You gonna break?” Bucky asks, chalking his cue. Next to him, already practicing lining up his shot, Sam snorts.

Steve looks at the both of them, warm and whole and here, for the moment, for the night, with him. In his head, in his soul, with him.

“No,” Steve says, and his fractured heart eases just a bit. “No, I'm good.”

 


End file.
